


A Star Traded

by spaceleviathan



Series: Captain Britain [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cap is a woman, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain America had been found. Captain America had been frozen. Captain America was adjusting to the 21st century. The 21st century was adjusting to Captain America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Star Traded

**Author's Note:**

> I should be working on my other stuff, but I'm not. You can find me at spaceleviathan.tumblr.com (writing blog) and also space-leviathan.tumblr.com.

Of course Tony had heard of Captain America – they’d all _heard_ of Captain America.

Worse than that, Coulson had the baseball cards and Tony still had some action figures and Hawkeye had all the comics. _All_ the comics. The Avengers, in the end, were just a bunch of rag-tag Captain America fan-boys, a picture-perfect echo of SHIELD’s origin story. Captain Phillips and Howard Stark had made SHIELD in Captain America’s honour; it was probably mandatory to have seen at least every Captain America film before being declared an ‘Agent of SHIELD’. Tony couldn’t say for sure, but he knew that Coulson at least could quote every cinematic incarnation pitch-perfect.

But that didn’t mean anyone _knew_ Captain America. During wartime, the hero had emerged and disappeared, a symbolic icon who appeared out of nowhere in 1943 and disappeared with the HYDRA ship in 1945. Like a wisp of patriotic smoke, there one day gone the next, leaving no name, no face and no evidence.

So when the news of something red-white-‘n’-blue being found shot like a whispering bullet from the SHIELD to the keen ears of Tony Stark, he obviously wanted in. However, the whole hush-hush, top priority, meant he didn’t get a chance until the stakes were high and an alien had come through a portal and destroyed a SHIELD base in seconds.

By the time he got to Germany (and during the trip from here to there, gamma monsters and Norse mythology had been added to the mix of weird and wonderful, and Tony was delighted to include ‘mechanical man’ into their stunning array of potentially disasters they were calling _The Avengers Initiative_ ) he had already thought up at least seven ice-related puns, fifteen old-man jokes, and a seven-foot long list of questions.

When he saw Loki, donned in a horned helmet and _cape_ , fight against an idol from his childhood, Tony had to take a second to stare. Everything was there: the spangly outfit, the stupid little heroic helmet, the _shield_. It dazzled him, because Captain America was _real_. No longer a legend, no longer a conspiracy theory. Somehow this was so much more important than a potentially immortal alien from another part of the universe. Not much, but Tony figured his priorities had always been a little off.

“Captain,” he said, as Loki surrendered his hands and Tony landed. And perhaps Tony should have been more concerned with the god sitting at his feet, and wasn’t the compliance suspicious, but this was _Captain America_. Tony wanted to touch, but jerked his own hand away. The hero misinterpreted the action, and reached out to shake it. Tony felt his stomach tumble, just a little. They were all fan-boys deep down, no matter how long it had been since Tony had packed his action figures into storage.

And then she said, “Mr Stark,” and a lot of illusions were shattered in two syllables.

“You’re British.”

“Astute of you to notice, Stark,” she said, gesturing to the jet which Natasha Romanoff, superspy and _assassin_ (who had spent a long time working in close quarters to Tony’s throat) had expertly landed. She was working on dispersing the crowd whilst Captain America hoisted Loki up by the back of his collar and pushed him into the open bay.

Tony followed, but only after he’d given himself a moment. He suddenly called out, “No, wait – you’re not _American_.”

He watched her efficiently fasten Loki tight, whilst Natasha bypassed them completely to take them back home. The red-head said, “Brace yourself,” as they took off. Captain America held on to the side of the plane, but her stance did not falter.

Once they were cruising, Tony said it again: “You’re not American, but you’re called Captain _America_.”

“It’s wasn’t my idea,” she said, reaching up for her helmet and unbuckling the back. Tony almost stopped her, feeling a yelp catch at the back of his mouth as she threatened to further crush any other dreams, but he reminded himself that questions were made to be answered. He watched in a mixture of horror and fascination as she shook her hair loose (brown, tied absently, ruffled by the fight) and held her hand out again.

“Peggy Carter,” she introduced and as Tony shook it he felt reality depart the situation; not that there had been a great deal of that in the first place. First hideous mutations, then aliens, and now Captain America was _British_ and called _Peggy_ and she had brown hair and brown eyes and red lips and a flush on her cheeks from battling something as super-strong as she was.

“Hi,” he said in reply, words irrelevant in this strange alternate dimension.

“I knew your father,” she said blandly. Without thinking, he replied: “I’m sorry to hear that.” She almost smiled. Coulson was going to kill him.

“So what are we going to do with him?” She asked, but thankfully Tony didn’t have to answer. Natasha got there first.

“SHIELD has a containment area.”

“For gods?” Tony asked, but caught on quickly. “Oh. Right. That’s a little pessimistic.”

“You’ve seen the files, Stark.” Captain America, who was not American and it was not getting easier to associate that accent with that outfit.

“That doesn’t mean we should treat him like an animal.”

“He’s done more damage than Loki,” she argued, but Tony caught the twitch of the god’s lips and the hollow emptiness of his eyes. He said, “Give it a bit of time.”

“Ideally, he won’t see light again,” Captain America snapped, glaring at Loki. He smiled at her slowly, and dammit he had known _exactly_ what he was doing; going to Germany all _kneel_ and _obey_ , summoning a wartime hero of old.

“Well, that’s unsettling.” Tony said, but figured there was nothing they could but keep an eye on the creepy-eyed god and hope to keep him contained. He supposed they _could_ interrogate him, but Iron Man wasn’t going to touch that hot mess with a ten-foot pole. He turned back to Captain America and said, “You look great by the way. You know, for a ninety year old.”

“And you look just like your father.” And ouch, Loki wasn’t the only know who knew where to hit the hardest. Tony held up his hands, backed off.

“Read you loud and clear.” But that didn’t mean he was about to stop; he had worked _really_ hard on his pseudo-insults. Called ‘pseudo’, he reasoned, because he didn’t _actually_ mean them maliciously – not to her, anyway. He figured she must know that, since she hadn’t punched him yet.

She’d punched Loki. Violently. Tony figured it was probably viral by now.

“No, but seriously, you’re going to have to explain this to me,” he broke the silence, having spent too long staring at Captain America who was keeping her eye on their prisoner. “Why are you called Captain America if-“

And, of course, he was interrupted. He jumped when she did, and she had jumped when Loki had. Loki was staring to the roof of the jet, and Natasha was talking about turbulence. “It’s just lightning,” Tony said, but Loki laughed. Nothing about him wasn’t creepy, Tony decided. Nothing about him wasn’t completely off in every way. He never wanted to be alone with the guy, at least not without backup. Like Captain America backup. He could grill her some more whilst she ignored him to glare at legendary harbingers.

“Something’s on the roof,” Natasha then told them, as if they hadn’t noticed the sudden impact. The bay door opened against Natasha’s protests, and Captain America threw her hand out to push Tony behind her. Her protective instinct might have been flattering towards anyone else, but there was a hulking blond who was stealing their prisoner and Captain America was making herself busy trying to keep _Iron Man_ safe. Tony jumped out the plane to the tone of her protests, but he had heard stories of her own wartime exploits and to get angry at him for this was hypocritical. Tony saluted her before rocketing away from the jet, flying after Norse bastards who were closer to escaping with every second.

Except that they weren’t, they were _talking_ , and after that stunt in Germany Tony was not about to let them have a heart-to-heart. They can have their little moment when they were both safely (or as safe as feasibly possible) locked inside the depths of SHIELD’s favourite flying eye-sore.

“You can’t go _stealing_ prisoners,” he told the blond, and felt like even stern-faced, red-lipped Captain America would be proud of his sensible voice. “And you shouldn’t swing your hammer like that either, you’re just gonna get on my bad side, you do _not_ wanna do th-“ And then there were fists and repulsors and a lot of electricity and Tony felt like between them they were going to level the forest. Thank _god_ for Captain America, even if she did hit him around the head with her _vibranium_ shield, thank you very much, because it’s not like Tony’s head was already ringing or, you know, _vincible._ He couldn’t say the same for the Norseman.

Loki, meanwhile, was grinning like a hyena, all teeth and sharp edges, and it was his fellow god rather than Captain America who dragged him bodily back to the jet. Thor, the blond with impulse issues that Tony rather admired and a face sour enough to put Peggy Carter to shame, was not a threat (or at least of less immediate concern than Loki). He was easily led by Captain America’s orders, and with Loki collared by a much bigger alien and everyone introduced, Tony was surprised to find the atmosphere start to edge towards success. Confused success, because really all of this was too weird for this time of day (for _any_ time of day), but optimistic nonetheless.

Wanting to abate at least some of his confusion, he said: “No, seriously, you’re called Captain _America_. Are you even aware of this?”

“I am.” She said, approaching him, standing toe to toe, and still being as tall as he was even in his Iron Man suit. He conformed without question when she said, “And we’d all appreciate your silence for the time, Stark.”

The god of thunder, who sat quietly opposite his brother, strapped in obediently and treating Captain America with easy respect and Tony with a cautious forgiveness, had offered to take his goddamn _brother_ wherever they directed him. Natasha and Captain America had both indicated that they’d prefer to know where Loki was at all times, even if that meant sharing the same space.

He hadn’t run, and he was smiling so prettily. Whenever Loki’s eyes met his, Tony felt like he was being sliced into bite-sized chunks, and not in the fun way.

“Maybe you should take him back to wherever you both came from,” Tony said pointedly, the third time it happened. “Your parents did tell him it’s rude to break other people’s stuff? Like their buildings and their peace treaties…”

“If I could I would take him to my father immediately,” Thor promised, and although his adorable face was still scrunched up unpleasantly he was no long angry at Tony. Which made one person. Two if you counted Natasha, but he didn’t expect much from her; she had spent extended periods of time in his company, and he’d learned the hard way that his personality didn’t make friends.

“What’s stopping you?”

“He has the Tesseract.” Thor stated, and Loki hardly had time to get out a defensive syllable before Captain America had him pinned up against the wall, hand around his throat. His eyes were vivid, evil in the shadow she cast, and his lips were as wicked as his personality.

“I don’t have it,” he rolled his eyes, looked to his brother, and they had apparently already had this conversation. “Not only that, but I cannot find it for you.”

“You _could_ ,” Captain America returned, and he cocked an eyebrow. Otherwise, silence. No denial, which was as good as admittance. He wasn’t going to help them, and they didn’t expect him to.

However, Captain America looked like she was about to try to wring it out of him bodily. Tony went to step in when Thor reached for his buckle. Both were stilled when she took a breath and turned to the blond.

“Please,” she said politely, accent crisp and clipped. “Ensure, for his own safety, that your brother is kept away from me.”

“Probably for the best,” Tony said when Thor looked to him for guidance. “Loki’s been pressing her buttons.”

Loki started to say something, presumably about the amount of buttons, but stopped himself. His smile was becoming a permanent fixture on his face and Tony didn’t like it one bit.

“What’s the deal with the Tesseract?” He asked, figuring it was that bit of relevant SHIELD info that should have come with the Avengers homework and hadn’t. He didn’t want to ask Natasha, who was the epitome of SHIELD’s secretive nature, nor Captain America who had been close to snapping a neck over it. Loki might have pulled through an assault, but Tony wasn’t quiet as mystical. Or (and had he mentioned this?) potentially _immortal_.

“It’s an energy source,” Captain America answered anyway. “HYRDA were using it during the war to power their weapons.”

“And why do you need it, M.C.?”

Thor recognised he was being addressed and valiantly didn’t ask. “It takes more power than we have access to in order to travel between realms.”

“Makes sense,” Tony nodded, and then it was Loki’s turn. “What about you, Dynamo? What do you want with it?”

Tony could guess, and Loki didn’t answer anyway.

“I promise,” Thor swore solemnly, and damn it Tony believed him. “As soon as we have possession of the Tesseract I will take Loki and allow you peace.”

Something about that was niggling at the engineer, and most of it was frustration. He didn’t like being in the dark about things, especially not deliberately. “I know what I said, but maybe that wouldn’t be the best idea. I’d like to get a closer look at this Tesseract once we’ve got it.”

“A team of SHIELD scientists have been working on it for months,” Natasha inserted from upfront. “For _years_ , actually, since your father found it.”

“I assure you,” Thor said, leaning forward in his chair. “It will be better that we depart your realm and take the stone with us.”

Tony looked helplessly to his childhood hero for a bit of support, but Captain America was busy doing her _job_ which was not babysitting Tony’s ego. Tony would admit that he didn’t fully know what he expected to happen when he met her, but her ignoring him whilst he became increasingly irritating was… pretty much on the mark, if he thought about it. Anything else would have been out of character. Usually that was okay.

He leaned against the side of the jet. He avoided Loki’s eye.

“For the record,” Captain America said, during the silent flight home. “The name wasn’t my idea.”

It wasn’t much, but even a titbit was information, and information about Captain America, whether it be her name, her face or nationality, was something that the rest of the world didn’t know. Tony didn’t think she should be entrusting him with her secrets. He wasn’t very good at keeping mum. But for the first time, something in him wanted to learn to try.

See. Idols were bad for his health. Better to leave the hero-worship to the children.

\--

Tony had decided to stick by Bruce, leech-like and desperate and he knew it but didn’t care. He didn’t want to mess this up, even if looked like Bruce was resistant to his thoughtlessness, tactlessness. Nonetheless, Tony attempted to tread carefully, and it wasn’t just because Bruce could sometimes go a little green at the gills.

His admittedly bodged attempts at friendship was no more obvious than when he was presented with someone he _knew_ he’d blown his chances with.

He asked, “How are you even adjusting?” and Captain America shrugged. She wasn’t wearing her helmet again and Tony didn’t know whether he liked it or not. Bruce was staring a lot, and really her face was supposed to be a secret and had been the cause of debates and endless theories for decades and here she was and Tony had to blink, remind himself this wasn’t some demented hallucination.

“It could have been more difficult,” she answered vaguely, but kept her distance from the touch-screen computers spitting out data. She eyed the spear they were studying warily, and Tony waved a hand. There were bigger things to be worrying about.

SHIELD, he told her like a good little trooper, were hiding things from them. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Captain America, however, was not dazzled by his super-sleuthy skills. She’d known the people who built this place. So had Tony, technically, but there was something more personal about her relationship with them than Tony’s with his father. Which sounded crazy, right up until he considered that Howard’s life’s work had results primarily in weapons for SHIELD, and SHIELD was a salute to the not-so-fallen hero who stood before him now. That was a sign of love unlike anything Tony had otherwise ever seen from his father.

Therefore, it made sense. She had been their friend, their ally, and they had built something from her loss. And now Howard’s brat of a son was trying to tear it all down, and Captain America was a strong woman with limited amounts of patience.

A brewing argument, however, was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a thin blond dressed in a tidy SHIELD uniform. He invited himself in wordlessly, drew a thin smiled at the scientists before addressing Captain America. He said it so carelessly, _Peggy, here,_ and pointing at a section of a file. Peggy, meanwhile, had snapped to attention.

The blond asked, voice soft as he stepped close to Captain America, “That’s weird, right?” and she nodded.

“We were just taking about that.”

“Then it’s in good hands,” the blond replied. There was something melancholy about his expression, but he didn’t seem concerned about whatever Captain America was not frowning about. “I trust you.”

The Captain’s eyes followed the blonde as he left again, and Tony said, jokingly, “I see why you’ve adapted so quickly to the new century.”

If Captain America’s glares had been scathing before, it was nothing compared to the scowl she sent him now. Bruce nudged him with his elbow, and Tony realised he’d misstepped.

“Didn’t mean to offend your oldie-worldy sensibilities,” which wasn’t much of an apology but was something and if she knew his dad then she should probably stop expecting anything else. He didn’t _like_ the man, per se, but Tony couldn’t say he hadn’t picked things up.

“Leave it,” she ordered, and once again, like back in Europe, he found himself obeying quicker than rebelling. Bruce was shaking his head at the data, and Tony was eating his sorrows, and Captain America was walking down the wrong corridor.

\--

Since then, hell had broken loose. Bruce was a raging green beast terrorising the lower levels, Tony was stuck between faulty turbines, Loki was a little shit and Captain America was still struggling with electronics.

How long had she been thawed out of that ice? Months, at least. In her defence, she could follow instructions with the best of them, though she spent the time between flicking switches and fighting Loki’s minions by telling him that after all of this was done they were going to sit down and have a crash-course in modern technology, no arguments. _Stark, you are the world-leader in advanced technology, and I am not as stupid as you’d like to believe_.

“At least get to valedictorian at MIT,” Tony said snappily, after he’d almost been cut into little pieces by a giant fan and had spent what he’d thought to be his last seconds vividly hallucinating vindictive flashes of burning eye-patches and Norsemen with gaping wounds. “ _Then_ we’ll talk Stark tech.”

“I’m a super-soldier, Stark,” she informed him primly, as if he’d forgotten. “I am simply out-dated, not incapable.”

“There’s a saying: you can’t teach an old dogs new tricks,” he said, but it was mostly to himself. Over the din of almost falling out of the sky and the mess left behind, he doubted she even heard him.

She said five minutes later, almost proudly, “I can work a smartphone.”

“Well, you gotta start somewhere.”

And perhaps that was an agreement. Perhaps she was his hero and she was alone in the 21st century. Perhaps he shouldn’t have expected her to be sunshine and rainbows after seventy years had blinked by in an instant and she had woken up somewhere worse than where she had left. Perhaps Tony wasn’t making it better.

\--

Peggy Carter was not a soldier.

Oh, she was definitely a _soldier_ , three hundred percent and then some. But she was twisty and clever and all types of secretive. She wore bright red lipstick and smiled softly at small blonds, and she looked devastatingly attractive with her hair falling around her face, bleeding a little from minor wounds sustained in battle. She was defensive, she was witty, and sometimes she was cold. She hoisted a shield like it was enough, and sometimes brandished it in the name of altruism.

She wasn’t a soldier as Tony thought of soldiers. So she wasn’t a soldier, despite what SHIELD wanted her to be.

They sat together silently, and there was a stain of blood where Phil Coulson should be, and Captain America refused to pick up his trading cards. The little blond, a SHIELD operative assigned to assist the Captain through the transformation from one war to another, gave her an earpiece. His hand lingered on Captain America’s shoulder, and then briefly over her fingers. He beat a hasty retreat when Nick Fury appeared and was out of the backdoor before he’d even reached the table.

The Director said something noble, but Tony wasn’t noble. Tony wasn’t a soldier, and Tony _definitely_ wasn’t a hero. Coulson had died being a hero, and that was stupid. Angry, he fled and refused to feel betrayed when Cap didn’t follow.

\--

He was alone with Loki. Tony was alone with Loki with no functioning armour, battling for time with only his tongue and bad attitude. Loki had enough of both of those things on his own, and his patience was wearing thin.

Tony had sworn that this wouldn’t happen, but here they were with no Captain America in sight and Coulson was dead and his name was _Phil_ and Captain America was called _Peggy_ and she was British and this day could not get weirder, even with brainwashing added to the mix. At this point, Tony was half-ready to just go with it, see what came next, hope for the best. Maybe Cap would save him.

Or, maybe, like usual, he would save himself.

Heroes, he reminded himself, were for children.

\--

In a way, their disagreements kinda made them work better together.

Between them there wasn’t any aspect of awe, except when Tony used Carter’s shield to blast three Chitauri in one blow, because that was awesome. Or when she used him as a weapon after her enemies ducked a hit- No, Tony was so over it now and he had survived a _god_ and really Captain America wasn’t all that compared to divinity.

Except, of course, that she was.

When everything had escalated, Captain America had taken charge. She had been bossy and overbearing and _overwhelmingly_ powerful, and she was right. She made the right calls, the tough choices, and Tony could forgive her for almost dooming him to the vacuum of space, and that was mostly because Tony didn’t find out about the kill-switch order until much, _much_ later.

And when everything started to cool, there she was again, making sure her team, the civilians, the _world_ , was safe. Meanwhile, Tony’s stomach rumbled.

Fuck, Tony thought. She was a superhero. What did that make him?

\--

Peggy Carter _was_ a soldier, and Tony realised that belatedly. SHIELD had not wanted a soldier, they had wanted an agent, and Peggy would have been a helpful one if only she wasn’t trying so hard to be good. Wily and shrewd, clever and quick, there was something almost suspicious about her. But she fought for the greater good of the world, and she stood to attention when a superior spoke, and she didn’t back down when she disagreed with someone.

Perhaps SHIELD had expected someone different. Sometimes the inherent goodness in her seemed a little forced, almost like she was trying to prove something, but she tried so hard to be the best she could be, pushed herself too much, and Tony didn’t know how to respond to it.

So, of course, he built her a room, he didn’t tell the Avengers, and he went back to the files to see whether there were personal details he could include to make it feel more… more like something Peggy would want. Like something Peggy deserved. Better than a shitty little hovel SHIELD dug up to hide her away in.

“Here,” Pepper said, coming up next to him and slipping a file over the table. “I don’t know what you expect to find in there.”

“Names. Pictures, maybe? Some of her old army buddies to keep their memory fresh or something.”

“That’s nice, Tony,” Pepper said, in the tone she used when she was questioning the wisdom of his decisions, or when she suspected collateral damage might be on the horizon. “Just tread carefully. Do you need me? Because I still have a company to run.”

“Yeah, I’m good. No, no, wait, one question,” he asked suddenly, pointing at a name underneath Captain America’s. Someone who had, apparently, been found with her on ice. Somehow. “Who’s Steve Rogers?”

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve read a few Cap being a lady fics, but I felt like they weren’t extreme enough for my tastes. So here, have a ridiculous divergence from canon.  
> I think this series will be 3 parts: this one, then a re-working of Cap 1, and then post-Cap 2.  
> Also, my writing blog is new, check it out: spaceleviathan.tumblr.com


End file.
